Lake George Opera double-header: great opera on the sly

SARATOGA SPRINGS … In recent seasons the Lake George Opera has been turning audiences on to newish works with an ingenious marketing scheme … by hardly mentioning it. It’s just more opera, sung in English and sometimes it’s the best stuff of the season.

This year they’re being particularly sly, offering a recent American one act, Michael Ching’s “Buoso’s Ghost” from 1996, as the sequel to a Puccini comedy, “Gianni Schicchi.”

A very rich and very dead man, Buoso Donati, is the center of attention for the evening. The disposition of his estate causes some grand scheming among a fleet of relatives. After finding that everything goes to a monastery, the cousins call in Gianni Schicchi to quietly set things right before word leaks of the death. Of course, nothing is quiet or simple. Voices and tempers gets raised easily and frequently.

Baritone Robert Orth was terrific as Schicchi. Mature and commanding in both voice and presence, he’s a nimble performer full of comedy and caricature. Also a vocal stand out was the tall and blond tenor Colin Ainsworth as an earnest Rinuccio.

As Lauretta, soprano Khori Dastoor gets the one hit number of the night, the lilting “O mio babbino caro,” which entered popular consciousness during the 1980s thanks to its use in the film “A Room with a View.” Dastoor’s voice is not coloratura pure but she delivered the aria with a deft mix of pleading tenderness and gentle insistence.

The sequel picks up right where Puccini left off, giving Rinuccio and Lauretta a big duet and then pitting Schicchi and the cousins against each other again. Plot points are snatched from the original as are the best musical motifs, though we quickly feel in a new and modern time, not least because the characters have started to sing in English.

As both composer and librettist, Ching is skilled and clever but it’s hard to discern his own musical voice. Besides the expected echoes of Puccini, there were shades of Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” and Bernstein’s “Mass.” Near the end, the otherwise frenetic Schicchi has a rare bit of self-reflection that threatened to devolve into Andrew Lloyd Weber or worse. Luckily Ching brought it to a close and left the conniving character mostly in tact.

At the podium, the composer gave both operas some vigor and the LGO orchestra sounded pure and strong. All of the lead singers, by the way, have been doing double duty, also appearing in the fine concurrent production of “The Pirates of Penzance.”

Joseph Dalton is a local freelance writer who contributes regularly to the Times Union.